State Government Websites

Every year at this time, I try to review all of the state websites knowing that this is when many choose to make major enhancements to their portals. Here are a few of the things I have noticed:

• Indiana - Indiana's new portal is a beautiful site and a major improvement from the previous version. The dynamic photo news element in the center is captivating and dynamic and draws the users attention. The page focuses your attention on news and online services.
• Rhode Island's "media central" contains pages for blogs, podcasts, calendars (focusing on ical interoperability) and more. Rhode Island (along with Utah) was one of the first states to start publishing RSS feeds. I have been creating a list of government calendars in Utah to do something similar with the calendars, in addition to the statewide calendar of public meetings that will be created in response to this year's legislation.
• Montana's new site is compact and functional.
• I still can't decide if I like California's new portal better than the old.
• I've always liked usa.gov, but they have made it harder to locate state governments by removing it from its previous location at the upper left hand of the page.
• Kentucky's Get Healthy initiative has a flash user-focused interface.
• I like Alabama's e11 directory. Alabama has become one of the better state portals.
• There used to be several really bad state portals. Now there is only one, but I'm not going to say which one it is.